Risk Management from Everyone. Everywhere. ®

Review of Stick Out Your Balance Sheet and Cough

I have three expectations when I read business books: they should be fun to read, void of any Greek letters and equations, and when I am done, I have taken away a few golden nuggets of information.

Stick Out Your Balance Sheet and Cough was both fun to read and I took away way more than the usual few nuggets; there are dozens of nuggets in there. (Needless to say, there were no quadratic equations either.)

It becomes very clear early on that you are not reading boring accounting theory or MBA jargon, but the cumulative experience of a very bright guy. I am the sort of person who enjoys case studies and real life examples and Gary Patterson (ak.a The FiscalDoctor) brings that style to his book. (I was hooked by page three of the introduction when he tells a tale of the crazy events that took place at a luggage company.)

When I read business books, I do so with a stack of those really small Post It Notes and stick them to great paragraphs so I can refer to them later. By the end of Stick Out Your Balance Sheet and Cough, I had dozens of little yellow tabs sticking out in every direction of the closed book.

Let’s face it, from owner or controller of a small- or medium-sized company to the CFO of a billion dollar company, everyone is busy. But this is an easy read with lots of great cases, lists and best practices which you will likely want to implement before you even finish each chapter. It’s just the sort of book which you can read on your commute in 2-3 days and worth re-reading once a year.